{"title":"The Ubiquity of Psychopathology and the Quandaries this Imposes for Determining \"Reality\".","authors":"Jerry S Piven","doi":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.4.359","DOIUrl":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.4.359","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article, I argue that psychopathology ubiquitously pervades individual and social life. As Freud wrote, each of us finds some way of distorting reality, and as Laing contended, human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-deception. History is a chronicle of fantasies, mirages, distortions, and metaphysical consolations believed as apodictic reality, and the bizarre magico-salvific stratagems people adopted to ward off disease, catastrophe, and death. And yet many (even psychoanalysts) maintain the notion (or fantasy) that we perceive reality clearly and sanely. I contend, on the contrary, that we have no epistemologically foolproof way of discerning our own deceptions and defects, and that we find all manner of ingenious excuses not to see ourselves.</p>","PeriodicalId":39855,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Review","volume":"110 4","pages":"359-390"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138810464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Therapist as a Collaborative Pianist.","authors":"Ephrat Havron, Ido Ariel","doi":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.4.391","DOIUrl":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.4.391","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article we seek to examine what we might learn about the therapist/psychoanalyst's function as selfobject by examining the relationship between the \"vocal persona\" and the \"instrumental persona\" in the art song. The comparison was born out of our own life partnership as a therapist, currently studying in a psychoanalytic-Buddhist training program that stresses the presence of the therapist/psychoanalyst as selfobject; and a collaborative pianist who instructs and performs with singers onstage. The concept of selfobject has offered a compelling and fruitful analogy. We explain and demonstrate this analogy using the terms selfobject and instrumental persona, which have in common the willingness to suspend selfhood in order to stand by another- a patient or a vocal persona- so that the latter might take root and flourish.</p>","PeriodicalId":39855,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Review","volume":"110 4","pages":"391-412"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138810459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Architecture of the mind: A Psychodynamic Case Study of Dissociated Selves.","authors":"Daniel Moreno Flórez","doi":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.4.439","DOIUrl":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.4.439","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The author seeks to explore the development and treatment of dissociative symptoms emerging in a 17-year-old nonbinary individual throughout two inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations. The patient endorsed the presence of multiple selves that remained connected with reality and internally with each other, emphasizing their existence in spatial allocations within the patient's mind both while dreaming and in waking life. The author highlights the therapeutic space as an opportunity to allow the interaction between dissociated selves surging from violent childhood experiences in hopes of allowing the integration of the fragmented parts of the main self. The roles of dreamwork, creative expressions, and language will be highlighted as essential components that allowed symbolization for a bicultural, bilingual individual who recently immigrated to the United States. Treatment was conducted within the limitations and particularities of inpatient psychiatric treatment, restricting treatment to a preliminary phase of exploration and containment.</p>","PeriodicalId":39855,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Review","volume":"110 4","pages":"439-456"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138810449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Subject of the Dialectic: Some Consequences of Freud's Bisexuality Thesis.","authors":"Thomas Olver","doi":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.3.259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2023.110.3.259","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>On the basis of a previous reading (Olver, 2023) of Freud's work that reveals a bisexuality thesis, the author discusses several interrelated consequences of this thesis, including the nature of desire and primal unity, a restatement of shame, the semiotic model, and the emergence of society and the economy with reference to the ego and the superego. These consequences together encapsulate and describe the dialectic of the subject. The author shows how dialectic movement is arrested by various acts of nomination, most notably the nomination of heterosexuality in the forms of sexual reproduction and financial profit that become social and economic master values in modernity. Only by keeping the dialectic open can the subject do justice to its inherent and revolutionary bisexual nature, not in the sense of transgression but rather in pursuit of the nonnomination that is the permanent <i>becoming</i> of a dialectic self.</p>","PeriodicalId":39855,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Review","volume":"110 3","pages":"259-286"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10213730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tove Jansson's <i>Moominland Midwinter</i>: Closeness and Separateness in Psychoanalytic Work.","authors":"Helene Wolf","doi":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.3.321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2023.110.3.321","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A research adventure on closeness and separateness in psychoanalysis is presented. The theme is explored through the author's daydreams evoked by clinical encounters. These are analyzed and metaphorically illustrated with psychoanalytical theories in dialogue with Tove Jansson's <i>Moominland Midwinter.</i> Closeness is likened to \"mother's house\" and separateness to \"midwinter.\" Vacillation between and balancing of \"mother's house\" and \"midwinter\" following the patient's and the dyad's unique needs are suggested as pivotal for psychic development and creativity. A conclusion is that the author's practice can be enhanced by letting the cool winds and the mysteries of \"midwinter\" in.</p>","PeriodicalId":39855,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Review","volume":"110 3","pages":"321-342"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10213731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Abolishing the Captivity of a Tyrannized Woman: Evidence of Bion's Concept of the Contact-Barrier as Manifested in Dreams.","authors":"Yaakov Roitman","doi":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.3.295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2023.110.3.295","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Bion's notion of the contact-barrier formulates a semipermeable membrane responsible for preserving the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious. However, the question of how a newly established contact-barrier manifests itself in dreams remains unanswered. The author proposes that one such manifestation occurs when a patient sees themself asleep in a dream. A case of a severely traumatized woman who had difficulty thinking and being close to others is used to explore these clinical ideas. The author, in response to his reveries in a session, introduced a playful dream-like dialogue between a playwright and his reader. The nature of the communication, in functioning as a barrier, served to protect the patient from a tyrannizing reality: the therapist's sexuality. This intersubjective barrier helped the patient to contact dissociated and damaged parts of herself, and it also facilitated her ability to dream a sense of her own boundaries, femininity, and sexuality.</p>","PeriodicalId":39855,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Review","volume":"110 3","pages":"295-319"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10220094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Liquid Modernity and Imagistic Production: Reflections on Social Media and Free Associations.","authors":"Marcelo D Gomes","doi":"10.1521/prev.2023.110.3.287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2023.110.3.287","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Social media has profound impact on how we experience the world and interact with others. Rapidly advancing technology has created platforms that have become increasingly image-based and emotionally manipulative. Do the new patterns of communication change patients' mental processes? Is free association becoming more imagistic? Contemporary clinical settings invite new perspectives on the intersections between the social and individual realms, patients' modes of expression, and analysts' interpretations.</p>","PeriodicalId":39855,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Review","volume":"110 3","pages":"287-294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10213728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}